The instant cleaning device constitutes an improvement over the cleaning device described in the inventor's U.S. Pat. No. 4,976,000, the subject matter of which is incorporated herein by reference.
The inventor has gained significant knowledge from manufacturing and marketing the cleaning device described in his '000 patent and has created various ways of improving upon his earlier cleaning device.
The inventor's earlier cleaning device possessed a mushroom shaped pillow that depended into a conical shaped cavity of a base. While the pillow was deformable to accommodate a variety of concave and convex shapes, the pillow was perhaps too easily deformable in a sense that pressure applied by the pillow against a surface to be cleaned would simply further deform the pillow and depress it into the cavity, instead of providing greater frictional force between the pillow and the surface so that the surface could be scrubbed.
The earlier cleaning device also preferably utilized a removable cover including a peripheral elastic band adapted to surround the pillow. It was anticipated that these covers would be removable for washing, but would be also disposable, such that a customer would reorder additional covers. Customers have generally been reluctant to buy a product that needs manufactured replacement parts, and the process of fulfilling customer demand for such covers is fraught with problems.
Also, while the inventor's earlier cleaning device could be dunked in a bucket of cleaning solution (such as water, ammonia, and detergent) and applied to a window or other surface to be cleaned, such a technique was sometimes messy, was awkward if a long extension pole was used, and required frequent dunkings when cleaning relatively large surfaces.
Lastly, the earlier device has been used as a mop to clean surfaces of undesired liquids. If a relatively large amount of liquid were to be mopped, the pillow and cover would become very quickly saturated with water, without a convenient way to quickly squeeze, drain or remove the liquid away from the pillow and cover.